218—to Robert Rushton 1
8, St. James's Street, Jan. 21, 1812.
Though I have no objection to your refusal to carry
letters
to Mealey's, you will take care that the letters are taken by
Spero
at the proper time. I have also to observe, that Susan is to be treated with civility, and not
insulted
by any person over whom I have the smallest controul, or, indeed, by any one whatever, while I have the power to protect her. I am truly sorry to have any subject of complaint against
you
; I have too good an opinion of you to think I shall have occasion to repeat it, after the care I have taken of you, and my favourable intentions in your behalf. I see no occasion for any communication whatever between
you
and the
women
, and wish you to occupy yourself in preparing for the situation in which you will be placed. If a common sense of decency cannot prevent you from conducting yourself towards them with rudeness, I should at least hope that your
own interest
, and regard for a master who has
never
treated you with unkindness, will have some weight.
Yours, etc.,
Byron
.
P.S.—I wish you to attend to your arithmetic, to occupy yourself in surveying, measuring, and making yourself acquainted with every particular relative to the
land
of Newstead, and you will
write
to me
one letter every week
, that I may know how you go on.
Footnote 1:
The two following letters, and a suppressed passage in the letter to Moore of January 29, 1812, refer to a quarrel among his dependents, in which Rushton, the "little page" of Childe Harold (see
Letters
, vol. i. pp. 224, 242), played a part. The story is told at considerable length in a letter to Hodgson, dated January 28, 1812. To the same affair probably belong the following scrap and Byron's note:
"Pray don't forget me, as I shall never cease thinking of you, my Dearest and only Friend, (signed) S. H. V."
To this Byron has added this note:
"This was written on the 11th of January, 1812; on the 28th I received ample proof that the Girl had forgotten me and herself too. Heigho! B."
The letters show, writes Moore (
Life
, p. 152),
"how gravely and coolly the young lord could arbitrate on such an occasion, and with what considerate leaning towards the servant whose fidelity he had proved, in preference to any new liking or fancy by which it might be suspected he was actuated toward the other."
In a MS. book written by Mrs. Heath of Newstead (
née
Rebekah Beardall), it is stated that the elder Rushton had as his farm-servant Fletcher, afterwards Byron's valet. Byron watched Fletcher and young Robert Rushton ploughing, took a fancy to both, and engaged them as his servants. Rushton accompanied Byron to Geneva, but afterwards entered the service of James Wedderburn Webster (see p. 2,
1). In 1827 he married a woman of the name of Bagnall, and with her help kept a school at Arnold, near Nottingham. Subsequently he took a farm on the Newstead estate, named Hazelford, and shortly afterwards died, leaving a widow and three children.
